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For those absolutely devoid of scruples, charity fraud is the field par excellance, in which you can simultaneously harvest kudos for your humanitarianism and make off with vast bundles of untaxed cash. Convictions for charity fraud are so rare as to be nonexistent, so any criminals operating in other fields of endeavor are incurring unnecessary risks.

AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY: More Interested In Accumulating Wealth Than Saving LivesBased in part on "THE STOP CANCER BEFORE IT STARTS CAMPAIGN: How To Win The Losing War Against Cancer." Cancer Prevention Coalition Report, 2003. This report was sponsored by 8 leading cancer prevention experts, and endorsed by over 100 activists and citizen groups, and is based in part on a prior publication in the International Journal of Health Services (see Appendix A).by Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.Emeritus professor Environmental and Occupational Medicine University of Illinois School of Public Health and Chairman, The Cancer Prevention Coalition

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The American Cancer Society (ACS), Inc. consists of a National Home Office with 13 chartered Divisions throughout the United States and a presence in most communities.

Fact Sheet

"The American Cancer Society, is a nationwide community-based voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer through research, education, advocacy, and service. With more than two million volunteers nationwide, the American Cancer Society is one of the oldest and largest voluntary health agencies in the United States."

The National Home Office is responsible for overall planning and coordination of the Society's programs for cancer information delivery, cancer control and prevention, advocacy, resource development, and patient services. The National Office also provides technical support and materials to Divisions and local offices, and administers the intramural and extramural research programs. The National Board of Directors includes representatives for the Divisions and the general public.

The Divisions

The Society's 13 Divisions are governed by Boards of Directors composed of medical and lay volunteers throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. The Divisions are responsible for program delivery service in their regions.

Local Offices

More than 3,400 local offices nationwide are organized to deliver information on cancer prevention and early detection, and patient service programs at the community level.

Volunteers

More than two million volunteers carry out the Society's mission of eliminating cancer and improving quality of life for those facing the disease. These volunteers donate their time and talents to educate the public about early detection and prevention; advocate for responsible cancer legislation in local, state, and federal governments; and serve cancer patients and their families as they manage their cancer experience.

The ACS, then known as the American Society for the Control of Cancer (ASCC), was founded in 1913 in New York City by 15 prominent M.D.'s, largely oncologists. It was incorporated in 1922 by a small group of wealthy businessmen.

In 1936, the ASCC created a legion of 15,000 volunteers, "The Women's Field Army," to wage war on cancer and raise money for this purpose. By 1938, the Army had recruited about 150,000 volunteers, and become one of the nation's leading voluntary health organizations.

In 1945, the ASCC was reorganized and renamed the American Cancer Society (ACS). Within one year, $4 million had been raised, $1 million of which was used to establish a cancer research program. Shortly afterwards, the ACS began a "public education campaign," warning of "Cancer's Danger Signals." These included: a sore that does not heal; a change in bowel habits; and faulty lifestyle, such as poor diet. However, there was no consideration whatsoever of any other then well-known avoidable causes of cancer.

In 1971, the ACS aggressively campaigned President Nixon to declare the "War on Cancer," claiming that this could be won, given increased funding for the National Cancer Institute (NCI). President Nixon responded by increasing its funding by $200,000. This was in excess of the funding that it then received as one of 30 other National Institutes of Health. In so doing, President Nixon effectively created an independent status for the NCI.

The ACS and NCI have long continued to devote virtually exclusive priority to research on diagnosis and treatment of cancer, with indifference to prevention, other than faulty personal lifestyle, commonly known as "blame the victim," to the exclusion of a very wide range of then well-documented avoidable causes of cancer. The longstanding exclusionary emphasis of the ACS, and to a lesser extent the NCI, on the "blame the victim" cause of cancer was based on the claims of Sir Richard Doll, a closet industry consultant. The NCI's current budget of about $6 billion until very recently remains largely directed to these very limited objectives. Not surprisingly, the incidence of cancer over past decades has escalated, approximately parallel to its increased funding.

According to James Bennett, a recognized authority on charitable organizations, in 1988 the ACS held a fund balance of over $400 million with about $69 million of holdings in land, building, and equipment. However, the ACS spent only $90 million, 26 percent of its budget, on medical research and programs. The rest covered "operating expenses," including about 60 percent for generous salaries, pensions, executive benefits, and overhead. By 1989, the cash reserves of the ACS were more than $700 million.

In 1991, believing it was contributing to fighting cancer, the public gave nearly $350 million to the ACS. Most of this money came from donations averaging $3,500, besides highprofile fund-raising campaigns, such as the springtime daffodil sale and the May relay races. However, over subsequent decades, an increasing proportion of the ACS budget has come from large corporations, including the pharmaceutical, cancer drug, telecommunications, and entertainment industries.

In 1992, the American Cancer Society Foundation was created to allow the ACS to solicit contributions of more than $100,000. A close look at the heavy-hitters on the Foundation's board made it clear what conflicts of interests were at play, and from where the Foundation expected its big contributions. The Foundation's board of trustees included corporate executives from the pharmaceutical, investment, banking, and media industries. These included:

• David R. Bethune, president of Lederle Laboratories, a multinational pharmaceutical company and a division of American Cyanamid Company. Bethune was also vice president of American Cyanamid, which made chemical fertilizers and herbicides while transforming itself into a full-fledged pharmaceutical company. In 1988, American Cyanamid introduced Novatrone, an anti-cancer drug, and subsequently announced that it would buy a majority of shares of Immunex, a cancer drug industry.

• Gordon Binder, CEO of Amgen, the world's foremost biotechnology company, with over $1 billion in product sales in 1992. Amgen's success rested almost exclusively on one product, Neupogen, administered to chemotherapy patients to stimulate production of their white blood cells.

The ACS fund raising was very successful. A million here, a million there, much of it coming from the very industries instrumental in shaping ACS policy, or profiting from it.

A 1992 article in the Wall Street Journal, by Thomas DiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola College and veteran investigator of nonprofit organizations, revealed that the Texas affiliate of the ACS owned more than $11 million of assets in land and real estate, more than 56 vehicles, including 11 Ford Crown Victorias for senior executives, and 45 other cars assigned to staff members. ACS chapters in Arizona, California, and Missouri spent only 10 percent of their funds on direct community services. Thus for every $1 spent on direct services, approximately $6.40 was spent on compensation and overhead. In all ten states, salaries and fringe benefits were by far the largest single budget items, a surprising fact in light of the characterization of the appeals, which stressed an urgent and critical need for donations to provide cancer services.

In 1993, The Chronicle of Philanthropy published a statement that the ACS was "more interested in accumulating wealth than in saving lives." Fund-raising appeals routinely stated that the ACS needed more funds to support its cancer programs, all the while holding more than $750 million in cash and real estate assets.

Nationally, only 16 percent or less of all money raised was spent on direct services to cancer victims, like driving cancer patients from the hospital after chemotherapy and providing pain medication.

Most of the funds raised by the ACS have gone and still go to pay overhead, salaries, fringe benefits, and travel expenses of its national executives in Atlanta. They also go to pay chief executive officers, who earn six-figure salaries in several states, and the hundreds of other employees who work out of some 3,000 regional offices nationwide. The typical ACS affiliate, which helps raise the money for the national office, spent more than 52 percent of its budget on salaries, pensions, fringe benefits and overhead for its own employees. Salaries and overhead of most ACS affiliates also exceeded 50 percent, although most direct community services were handled by unpaid volunteers. DiLorenzo summed up his 1992 findings by emphasizing the ACS hoarding of funds.

If current needs are not being met because of insufficient funds, as fund-raising appeals suggest, why is so much cash being hoarded? Most contributors believe their donations are being used to fight cancer, not to accumulate financial reserves. More progress in the war against cancer would be made if they would divest some of their real estate holding and use the proceeds -- as well as a portion of their cash reserves -- to provide more cancer services.

Aside from high salaries and overhead, most of what was left of the ACS budget has gone to research on profitable patented cancer drugs.

As of 1998, the ACS budget was $380 million, with cash reserves approaching $1 billion. Yet its aggressive fund-raising campaign continued, and still continues, to plead poverty and lament the lack of available money for cancer research. Meanwhile, efforts to prevent cancer by phasing out avoidable exposures to environmental and occupational carcinogens remained ignored. The ACS also remained silent about its intricate relationships with the wealthy cancer drug, chemical, and other industries.

A March 30, 1998, Associated Press Release shed unexpected light on questionable ACS expenditures on lobbying. National vice president for federal and state governmental relations Linda Hay Crawford admitted that over the last year, the Society used ten of its own senior employees on direct lobbying. For legal and other help, it hired the lobbying firm of Hogan & Hartson, whose roster included former House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-IL). The lobbying also included $30,000 donations to Democratic and Republican governors' associations. "We wanted to look like players and be players," explained Crawford. This practice, however, had been sharply challenged. An Associated Press release quoted the national Charities Information Bureau as then stating, it "does not know of any other charity that makes contributions to political parties."

Not surprisingly, tax experts warned that these contributions could be illegal, as charities are not allowed to make political donations. Marcus Owens, director of the IRS Exempt Organization Division, also warned that, "The bottom line is campaign contributions will jeopardize a charity's tax exempt status." This warning still remains unheeded.

Three days later, the Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to And Justice for All, a pro-Bondi group supporting her 2014 reelection. Not only did Bondi decide not to investigate Trump, she also endorsed him for president last week.

On Monday, CREW filed an IRS complaint against Trump Foundation for making an illegal political donation and failing to disclose the contribution to the IRS. Due to the fact that Trump Foundation is a 501(c)(3) private foundation, it is prohibited from contributing to political organizations. After making the illegal donation, Trump Foundation falsely claimed it did not donate $25,000 to And Justice for All, a section 527 political organization, on its tax return.

“The rules are clear: a tax-exempt charitable foundation cannot support a political group,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder asserted. “The apparent failure to tell the IRS about this political activity makes matters worse and is something we’ve seen too many organizations doing lately.”

Marching in lockstep with the NCI in its "war on cancer" is the ACS's "ministry of information." With powerful media control and public relations resources, the ACS was and still remains the tail that wags the dog of NCI's policies and priorities. These reflected a virtually exclusive "blame-the-victim" philosophy, and emphasized faulty lifestyle rather than unknowing and avoidable exposures to workplace, environmental and other carcinogens. Giant corporations, which profited handsomely while they polluted air, water, the workplace, and food with a wide range of carcinogens, remain greatly comforted by the silence of the ACS. This silence reflected a complex of mindsets fixated on diagnosis, treatment, and basic genetic research, together with ignorance, indifference, and even hostility to prevention. These mindsets are also coupled with major conflicts of interest.

Indeed, despite promises to the public to do everything to "wipe out cancer in your lifetime," the ACS has failed to make its voice heard in Congress and the regulatory arena. Instead, the ACS has consistently rejected or ignored opportunities and requests from Congress, regulatory agencies, unions, environmental and consumer organizations to provide scientific evidence critical to efforts to legislate and occupational, environmental, and personal product carcinogens.

The launching of President Nixon's 1971 war against cancer provided the ACS with a well-exploited opportunity to pursue it own myopic and self-interested agenda.

ACS conflicts of interest are extensive and still largely unrecognized by the public. Meanwhile, the ACS continues to ignore a wide range of industrial carcinogens in water, air, food, the workplace, and in mainstream household, cosmetics and personal care products.

ACS strategies remain based on two myths: first that there has been dramatic progress in the treatment and cure of cancer, and second, that any increase in the incidence and mortality of cancer is due to aging of the population and smoking, while denying any significant role for involuntary exposures to industrial and other carcinogens.

As the world's largest nonreligious "charity," with powerful allies in the private and public sectors, ACS policies and priorities remain unchanged. Despite periodic protest, threats of boycotts, and questions on its finances, the ACS leadership responds with powerful public relations campaigns reflecting denial and manipulated information, while pillorying its opponents with scientific McCarthyism.

The verdict is unassailable. The ACS bears a major decades long responsibility for losing the winnable war against cancer. Reforming the ACS is, in principle, relatively easy and directly achievable. Boycott the ACS. Instead, give your charitable contributions to public interest and environmental groups involved in cancer prevention. Such a boycott is well overdue and will send the only message this "charity" can no longer ignore.

Of the members of the ACS board, about half are clinicians, oncologists, surgeons, radiologists, and basic molecular scientists, mostly with close ties to the NCI. Many board members and their institutional colleagues apply for and obtain funding from both the ACS and the NCI. Substantial NCI funds also go to ACS directors who sit on key NCI committees. Although the ACS asks board members to leave the room when the rest of the board discusses their funding proposals, this is just a token formality. In this private club, easy access to funding is one of the "perks," and the board routinely rubber-stamps approvals. A significant amount of ACS research funding goes to this extended membership. Frank conflicts of interest are evident in many ACS priorities. These include their policies on mammography, the National Breast Cancer Awareness campaign, and the pesticide and cancer drug industries. These conflicts even extend to the privatization of national cancer policy.

1. Mammography

The ACS has close connections to the mammography industry. As detailed in the author's 1998 The Politics of Cancer Revisited, five radiologists have served as ACS presidents, and in its every move, the ACS reflects the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films. These include Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker. In fact, if every woman followed ACS and NCI mammography guidelines, the annual revenue to health care facilities would be a staggering $5 billion.

ACS promotion continues to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. A leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results in a cure "nearly 100 percent of the time." An ACS communications director, questioned by journalist Kate Dempsey, responded in an article published by the Massachusetts Women's Community's journal Cancer: "The ad isn't based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point. Mammography today is a lucrative [and] highly competitive business."

In addition, the mammography industry conducts research for the ACS and its grantees, serves on advisory boards, and donates considerable funs. DuPont is a substantial backer of the ACS Breast Health Awareness Program; sponsors television shows and other media productions touting mammography; produces advertising, promotional, and educational literature and films for hospitals, clinics, medical organizations, and doctors; and lobbies Congress for legislation promoting availability of mammography services. In virtually all of these important actions, the ACS remains strongly linked with the mammography industry, while ignoring the development of viable alternatives to mammography, particularly breast self-examination.

The ACS exposes premenopausal women to radiation hazards from mammography with little or no evidence of benefits. The ACS also fails to tell them that their breasts will change so much over time that the "baseline" images have little or no future relevance. This is truly an American Cancer Society crusade. But against whom, or rather, for whom?

2. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

The highly publicized National Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign further illustrates these institutionalized conflicts of interest. Every October, ACS and NCI representatives help sponsor promotional events, hold interviews, and stress the need for mammography. The flagship of this month-long series of events is the October 15 National Mammography Day.

Conspicuously absent from the widely promoted National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is any information on environmental and other avoidable causes of breast cancer. This is no accident. Zeneca Pharmaceuticals -- a spin-off of Imperial Chemical Industries is one of the world's largest manufacturers of chlorinated and other industrial chemicals, including those incriminated as causes of breast cancer. Zeneca has also been the sole multimillion-dollar funder of the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month since its inception in 1984, besides the sole manufacturer of Tamoxifen, the world's top-selling anticancer and breast cancer "prevention" drug, with $400 million in annual sales. Furthermore, Zeneca recently assumed direct management of 11 cancer centers in U.S. hospitals. Zeneca owns a 50 percent stake in these centers known collectively as Salick Health Care.

The link between the ACS, NCI and Zeneca is especially strong when it comes to Tamoxifen. The ACS and NCI continue to aggressively promote the Tamoxifen, which is the cornerstone of its minimal prevention program. On March 7, 1997, the NCI Press Office released a four-page statement "For Response to Inquiries on Breast Cancer." The brief section on prevention reads:

Researchers are looking for a way to prevent breast cancer in women at high risk...A large study [is underway] to see if the drug Tamoxifen will reduce cancer risk in women age 60 or older and in women 35 to 59 who have a pattern of risk factors for breast cancer. This study is also a model for future studies of cancer prevention. Studies of diet and nutrition could also lead to preventive strategies.

Since Zeneca influences every leaflet, poster, publication, and commercial of the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it is no wonder that such information and publications, made no mention of carcinogenic industrial chemicals and their relation to breast cancer. Imperial Chemical Industries, Zeneca's parent company, profits by manufacturing breast cancer-causing chemicals. Zeneca profits from treatment of breast cancer, and hopes to profit still more from the prospects of large-scale national use of Tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a masterful public relations coup for Zeneca, providing the company with valuable goodwill, besides money from millions of American women.

3. The Pesticide Industry

Just how inbred is the relation between the ACS and the chemical industry became clear in the Spring of 1993 to Marty Koughan, a public TV producer. Koughan was then about to broadcast a documentary on the dangers of pesticides to children for the Public Broadcasting Service's hour-long show, Frontline. Koughan's investigation relied heavily on the June 1993 National Academy of Sciences ground-breaking report, entitled "Pesticides in the Diet of Children." This report declared the nation's food supply "inadequately protected" from cancer-causing pesticides and a significant threat to the health of children.

An earlier report, "Intolerable Risk: Pesticides In Our Children's Food," by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1989, had also given pesticide manufacturers failing marks. The report was released in high profile testimony to Congress by movie actress Meryl Streep. A mother of young children, Streep explained to a packed House chamber the report's findings, namely, that children were most at risk from cancer-causing pesticides in food as they consume a disproportionate amount of fruits, fruit juices, and vegetables relative to their size. However, shortly before Koughan's program was due to air, a draft of the script was mysteriously leaked to Porter-Novelli, a powerful public relations firm for produce growers and the agrichemical industry. In true Washington fashion, Porter-Novelli played both sides of the fence, representing both government agencies and the industries they regulated. Its 1993 client list included Ciba-Geigy, DuPont, Monsanto, Burroughs Wellcome, American Petroleum Institute, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Hoffman-LaRoche, Hoechst Celanese, Hoechst Roussel Pharmaceutical, Janssen Pharmaceutical, Johnson & Johnson, the Center for Produce Quality, as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the NCI, besides other National Institutes of Health.

Porter-Novelli first crafted a rebuttal to help quell public fears about pesticide-contaminated food. Next, Porter-Novelli called up another client, the American Cancer Society, for whom Porter-Novelli had done pro bono work for years. The rebuttal that Porter-Novelli had just sent off to its industry clients was faxed to ACS Atlanta headquarters. It was then circulated by e-mail on March 22, 1993, virtually verbatim from the memo Porter-Novelli had crafted as a backgrounder for 3,000 regional ACS offices to help field calls from the public after the show aired.

"The program makes unfounded suggestions...that pesticide residue in food may be at hazardous levels," the ACS memo read. "Its use of 'cancer cluster' leukemia case reports and non-specific community illnesses as alleged evidence of pesticide effects in people is unfortunate. We know of no community cancer cases and none in which pesticide use was confirmed as the cause."

This bold, unabashed defense of the pesticide industry, crafted by Porter-Novelli, was then rehashed a third time, this time by the right-wing group, Accuracy in Media (AIM). AIM's newsletter gleefully published quotes from the ACS memo in an article with the banner headline: "Junk Science on PBS." The article opened with "Can we afford the Public Broadcasting Service?", and then went on to disparage Koughan's documentary on pesticides and children. "In Our Children's Food...exemplified what the media have done to produce these 'popular panics' and the enormously costly waste [at PBS] cited by the New York Times."

When Koughan saw the AIM article he was initially outraged that the ACS was being used to defend the pesticide industry. "At first, I assumed complete ignorance on the part of the ACS," said Koughan. But after repeatedly trying, without success, to get the national office to rebut the AIM article, Koughan began to see what was really going on. "When I realized that Porter-Novelli represented five agrichemical companies, and that the ACS had been its client for years, it became obvious that the ACS had not been fooled at all," said Koughan. "They were willing partners in the deception, and were in fact doing a favor for a friend -- by flaking for the agrichemical industry."

Just as Senator Joseph McCarthy had his "black list" of suspected communists and Richard Nixon his environmental activist "enemies list," so too the ACS maintains a "Committee on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management" which periodically "reviews" unorthodox or alternative therapies. This Committee is comprised of "volunteer health care professionals," carefully selected proponents of orthodox, expensive, and usually toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opponents of alternative or "unproven" therapies which are generally cheap, nonpatentable, and minimally toxic.

Periodically, the Committee updates its statements on "unproven methods," which are then widely disseminated to clinicians, cheerleader science writers, and the public. Once a clinician or oncologist becomes associated with "unproven methods," he or she is blackballed by the cancer establishment. Funding for the accused "quack" becomes inaccessible, followed by systematic harassment.

The highly biased ACS witch-hunts against alternative practitioners is in striking contrast to its extravagant and uncritical endorsement of conventional toxic chemotherapy. This in spite of the absence of any objective evidence of improved survival rates or reduced mortality following chemotherapy for all but some relatively rare cancers.

In response to pressure from People Against Cancer, a grassroots group of cancer patients disillusioned with conventional cancer therapy, in 1986 some 40 members of Congress requested the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a Congressional think tank, to evaluate available information on alternative innovative therapies. While initially resistant, OTA eventually published a September 1990 report that identified some 200 promising studies on alternative therapies. OTA concluded that the NCI had "mandated responsibility to pursue this information and facilitate examination of widely used 'unconventional cancer treatments' for therapeutic potential."

Yet the ACS and NCI remained resistant, if not frankly hostile, to OTA's recommendations. In the January 1991 issue of its Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the ACS referred to the Hoxsey therapy, a nontoxic combination of herb extracts developed in the 1940s by populist Harry Hoxsey, as a "worthless tonic for cancer." However, a detailed critique of Hoxsey's treatment by Dr. Patricia Spain Ward, a leading contributor to the OTA report, concluded just the opposite: "More recent literature leaves no doubt that Hoxsey's formula does indeed contain many plant substances of marked therapeutic activity."

Nor is this the first time that the Society's charges of quackery have been called into question or discredited. A growing number of other innovative therapies originally attacked by the ACS have recently found less disfavor and even acceptance. These include hyperthermia, tumor necrosis factor (originally called Coley's toxin), hydrazine sulfate, and Burzynski's antineoplastons. Well over 100 promising alternative nonpatented and nontoxic therapies have been identified. Clearly, such treatments merit clinical testing and evaluation by the NCI using similar statistical techniques and criteria as established for conventional chemotherapy. However, while the FDA has approved approximately 40 patented drugs for cancer treatment, it has still not approved a single nonpatented alternative drug.

Subsequent events have further isolated the ACS in its fixation on "orthodox treatments." Bypassing the ACS and NCI, in June 1992 the National Institutes of Health opened a new Office of Alternative Medicine for the investigation of unconventional treatment of cancer and other diseases. Leading proponents of conventional therapy were invited to participate. The ACS refused. The NCI grudgingly and nominally participated while actively attacking alternative therapy with its widely circulated Cancer Information Services. Meanwhile, the NCI's police partner, the FDA, used its enforcement authority against distributors and practitioners of innovative and nontoxic therapies.

In an interesting development, the Washington, D.C. Center for Mind-Body Medicine, held a two-day conference on Comprehensive Cancer Care" Integrating Complementary and Alternative Medicine. According to Dr. James Gordon, president of the Center and chair of the Program Advisory Council of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine, the object of the conference was to bring together practitioners of mainstream and alternative medicine, together with cancer patients and high-ranking officials of the ACS and NCI. Dr. Gordon warned alternative practitioners that "they're going to need to get more rigorous with their work -- to be accepted by the mainstream community." However, no such warning was directed at the highly questionable claims of the NCI and ACS for the efficacy of conventional cancer chemotherapy. As significantly, criticism of the establishment's minimalistic priority for cancer prevention was effectively discouraged.

Privatization of National Cancer Policy

In February 2002, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced the National Cancer Act of 2002. Co-sponsored by 30 bipartisan Senators, including Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Hilary Clinton, the Bill was a radically different version of President Nixon's 1971 Act that launched the National Cancer Program. The Bill added $1.4 billion to the $4.6 billion 2003 budget authorized by President Bush, extra funds coming from the new Federal cigarette tax increase, and a further 50% annual increase to 2007, reaching a grand total of $14 billion. Feinstein said her goal was to "form our new battle plan to fight cancer." The legislation was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, then chaired by Senator Judd Gregg.

This Bill established a national network of 20 "translation" centers to combine basic and clinical research, and to commercialize promising findings. It also mandated insurance coverage for cancer screening, smoking cessation, genetic testing, and quality care standards, while making no reference to prevention.

Regrettably, this well-intentioned Bill surrendered the National Cancer Program to special interests. The legislation was strongly criticized by survivor coalitions, headed by the Cancer Leadership Council, and the American Society for Clinical Oncology. Of major concern, the Bill displaced control of cancer policy from the public to the private sector, the federal NCI to the "nonprofit" ACS, raising concerns on conflicts of interest and special interests. Dr. John Durant, Executive President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), awarded the Society’s 2002 Presidential U.S. Cancer Fighter of the Year, charged: "It has always seemed to me that this was an issue of control by the ACS over the cancer agenda. They are protecting their own fundraising capacity . . ." from competition by survivor groups. Not surprisingly, the authoritative U.S. charity watchdog, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, warned against the transfer of money from the public purse to private hands. The ACS is more interested in accumulating wealth than saving lives.

These conflicts of interest extended to the personal. The Legislative Committee co-chair, DeVita, was Board Chairman of CancerSource.com, a website promoting the ACS Consumers' Guide to Cancer Drugs. As disturbing, DeVita, and Dr. John Mendelsohn, Director of the NCI's M.D. Anderson Comprehensive Cancer Center, were consultants and board members of the publicly traded cancer drug company, ImClone Systems, Inc. Mendelsohn was also a board member of Enron, besides serving on its Audit Committee; Enron was a generous and long-term supporter of the M.D. Anderson. In May 2001 television and radio interviews, DeVita expressed enthusiasm on cancer drugs that targeted “EGF” receptors. However, he failed to disclose his annual $100,000 consulting fees from ImClone which was then actively seeking FDA approval of its targeted cancer drug Erbitux. DeVita also insisted, contrary to NCI’s own data, that the overall incidence of cancer had been decreasing at a steep rate every year since 1990. In May 2002, Dr. Samuel Waksal resigned as president and CEO of ImClone. One month later, he was arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy, securities fraud and perjury, and civil damages for insider trading, and was subsequently indicted on charges of insider trading, bank fraud, forging a signature and obstructing a federal investigation.

As soon as Nelson-Rees arrived at the Denver Hilton Hotel, where members of the Tissue Culture Association were gathering for their twenty-ninth annual meeting, a friend came up and said, "The Anderson group is out to get you."

In the September/October 2002 issue of The Cancer Journal, an article by its co-editor DeVita, “A Perspective on the War on Cancer” was prefaced by the following disclaimer: “No benefits in any form have been or will be received from a commercial party related directly or indirectly to the subject of this article.” However, as pointed out in a November 15, 2002 letter (by the author) to the Journal’s other co-editors, Drs. Samuel Hellman and Steven Rosenberg, this disclaimer was inconsistent with DeVita’s conflicts of interest relating to the CancerSource.com web site, and his ImClone consulting fees. The editors of the Journal responded that it “takes matters of conflict of interest and disclosure very seriously,” but nevertheless declined to publish the letter.

ACS has interlocking interests with the pharmaceutical, cancer drug, mammography film and machine, and biotechnology industries. This is reflected by generous ACS allocations for research on highly profitable patented cancer drugs, and aggressive promotion of premenopausal mammography. In striking contrast, less than 0.1% of revenues in 1998 were allocated to environmental, occupational and other avoidable causes of cancer. More seriously, ACS policies on primary cancer prevention extend from a decades-long track record of indifference, or even hostility, compounded by pro-industry bias, even to the tobacco industry. Shandwick International, representing R.J. Reynolds, and Edelman Worldwide, representing Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, have been major PR firms for the ACS; Shandwick assisted the NDC in drafting the new National Cancer Act, while Edelman conducted the ACS voter education campaign for the 2000 Presidential elections. ACS promptly discontinued these relations, protesting “front end due diligence,” once the damaging information became public.

The highly politicized and non-transparent agenda of the ACS is troubling. This is further exemplified by expenditures on lobbying, including donations to Democratic and Republican Governors' associations: "We wanted to look like players and be players," an ACS representative admitted. Tax experts have warned that these contributions may be illegal as charities are not allowed to make political donations. Marcus Owen, Director of the IRS Exempt Organization Division, also warned, "The bottom line is campaign contributions will jeopardize a charity's exempt status."

It should be emphasized that the ACS has long exercised dominant influence over NCI policy, and remains “the tail that wags the NCI dog.” This influence was consolidated by the February 2002 appointment of Dr. Andrew Von Eschenbach as NCI Director; prior to his appointment, Eschenbach was Vice-President of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and President-elect of the ACS. Furthermore, as a condition of his appointment, Eschenbach obtained agreement that he continue as NDC’s leader. Thus, irrespective of the Feinstein initiative, to all intents and purposes, the National Cancer Program has since become privatized.

• 1998-2000: PR for the ACS was handled by Shandwick International, whose major clients included R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings.

• 2000-2002: PR for the ACS was handled by Edelman Public Relations, whose major clients included Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, and the Altria Group, the parent company of Philip Morris, Kraft, and fast food and soft drink beverage companies.

Industry Funding

ACS has received contributions in excess of $100,000 from a wide range of "Excalibur Donors." Some of these companies were responsible for environmental pollution with carcinogens, while others manufactured and sold products containing toxic and carcinogenic ingredients. These include:

1971 When studies unequivocally proved that diethylstilbestrol (DES) caused vaginal cancers in teenage daughters of women administered the drug during pregnancy, the ACS refused an invitation to testify at Congressional hearings to require the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban its use as an animal feed additive. It gave no reason for its refusal. Not surprisingly, U.S. meat is banned by other nations worldwide.

1977 The ACS opposed regulations proposed for hair coloring products that contained dyes known to cause breast and liver cancer in rodents. In so doing, the ACS ignored virtually every tenet of responsible public health as these chemicals were clear-cut liver and breast carcinogens.

The ACS also called for a Congressional moratorium on the FDA's proposed ban on saccharin and even advocated its use by nursing mothers and babies in "moderation" despite clear-cut evidence of its carcinogenicity in rodents. This reflects the consistent rejection by the ACS of the importance of animal evidence as predictive of human cancer risk.

1978 Tony Mazzocchi, then senior representative of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, stated at a Washington, D.C., roundtable between public interest groups and high-ranking ACS officials: "Occupational safety standards have received no support from the ACS." Congressman Paul Rogers also censured the ACS for doing "too little, too late" in failing to support the Clean Air Act.

1982 The ACS adopted a highly restrictive cancer policy that insisted on unequivocal human evidence of carcinogenicity before taking any position on public health hazards. Accordingly, the ACS still trivializes or rejects evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals, and has actively campaigned against laws (the 1958 Delaney Law, for instance) that ban deliberate addition to food of any amount of any additive shown to cause cancer in either animals or humans. The ACS still persists in an anti-Delaney policy, in spite of the overwhelming support for this Law by the independent scientific community.

1983 The ACS refused to join a coalition of the March of Dimes, American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association to support the Clear Air Act.

1984 The ACS created the October National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, funded and promoted by Zeneca, an offshoot of the U.K. Imperial Chemical Industry, a major manufacturer of petrochemical products. The ACS leads women to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. A recent ACS advertisement promised that "early detection results in a cure nearly 100% of the time." Responding to questions from a journalist, an ACS communications director admitted: "The ad is based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point.

Mammography today is a lucrative [and] highly competitive business." Even more seriously, the Awareness Month publications and advertisements studiously avoid any reference to the wealth of information on avoidable causes and prevention of breast cancer.

1989 Launched in 1989 by the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association (CTFA) and the National Cosmetology Association, the Look Good . . . Feel Better Program was "dedicated to teaching women cancer patients beauty techniques to help restore their appearance and selfimage during cancer treatment."

Just what could be more noble? Or so it might just seem. The October 2005 Look Good Program was supported by 22 CTFA-member cosmetic companies, including multibillion-dollar household name global giants. Each year, member companies "donate over one million individual cosmetic and personal care products, valued at $10 million, and raise more than $2 million." The Program was administered nationwide by the ACS, "which managed volunteer training, and served as the primary source of information to the public."

There is no doubt that the products donated by the cosmetic companies, such as eye and cheek colors, lipsticks, moisture lotions, pressed powders and other makeup, are restorative. However, there is also no doubt that the ACS and the companies involved were oblivious to or strangely silent on the dangers of the Look Good products, whose ingredients were readily absorbed through the skin.

A review of 12 Look Good products, marketed by six companies, revealed that 10 contained toxic ingredients. These pose risks of cancer, and also hormonal (endocrine disruptive) effects.

Evidence for the cancer risks is based on standard tests in rodents, and on human (epidemiological) studies. Evidence for the hormonal risks is based on test-tube tests with breast cancer cells, or by stimulating premature sexual development in infant rodents. Unbelievably, the ACS explicitly warns women undergoing cancer chemotherapy --- "Don't use hormonal creams."

Take for example Estee Lauder's LightSource Transforming Moisture Lotion, Chanel's Sheer Lipstick, and Merle Norman Eye Color. These products contain ingredients which are carcinogenic, contaminated with carcinogens, or precursors of carcinogens. The products also contain hormonal ingredients, known as parabens, one of which has been identified in breast cancer tissue, and incriminated as a probable cause of breast cancer.

The ACS silence with regard to the risks of the Look Good products extends more widely to cosmetics and personal care products used by women, personal care products used by men, and baby lotions and shampoos. This silence is also consistent with the imbalanced objectives of the ACS highly publicized annual "Breast Cancer Awareness Month." While dedicated to the early detection of breast cancer, this event is silent on a wide range of its avoidable causes, besides the escalating incidence of post-menopausal breast cancer, by nearly 40%, over the last three decades.

Of likely relevance to the ACS silence is its interlocking interests with the cosmetic, besides other industries. The major Look Good companies were among some 350 ACS "Excalibur Donors," each donating a minimum of $10,000 annually. Other donors include petrochemical, power plant, and hazardous waste industries, whose environmental pollutants have been incriminated as causes of breast, besides other, cancers.

The ACS silence was also recklessly shared by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is required by the 1971 National Cancer Act to provide the public with information on avoidable causes of cancer. However, in spite of approximately $50 billion of taxpayers funding since 1971, the NCI has joined with the ACS in denying the public's right to know of avoidable causes of cancer from industrial chemicals, radiation, and common prescription drugs. Both the NCI and ACS are locked at the hip in policies fixated on damage control-screening, diagnosis, treatment and treatment-related research, with indifference to cancer prevention due to avoidable exposures to chemical carcinogens in cosmetics, other consumer products, air and water.

Equally asleep at the wheel remained the Food and Drug Administration in spite of its regulatory authority. The 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act explicitly requires that "The label of cosmetic products shall bear a warning statement . . . to prevent a health hazard that may be associated with a product."

1992 The ACS issued a joint statement with the Chlorine Institute in support of the continued global use of organochlorine pesticides, despite clear evidence that some were known to cause breast cancer. In this statement, ACS vice president Clark Heath, M.D., dismissed evidence of any risk as "preliminary and mostly based on weak and indirect association." Heath then went on to explain away the blame for increasing breast cancer rates as due to better detection: "Speculation that such exposures account for observed geographic differences in breast cancer occurrence should be received with caution; more likely, much of the recent rise in incidence in the United States...reflects increased utilization of mammography over the past decade."

In conjunction with the NCI, the ACS aggressively launched a "chemoprevention" program aimed at recruiting 16,000 healthy women at supposedly "high risk" of breast cancer into a 5-year clinical trial with a highly profitable drug called Tamoxifen. This drug is manufactured by one of the world's most powerful cancer drug industries, Zeneca, an offshoot of the Imperial Chemical Industries. The women were told that the drug was essentially harmless, and that it could reduce their risk of breast cancer. What the women were not told was that Tamoxifen had already been shown to be a highly potent liver carcinogen in rodent tests, and was also well-known to induce uterine cancer in women.

1993 Just before PBS Frontline aired the special entitled, "In Our Children's Food," the ACS came out in support of the pesticide industry. In a damage-control memorandum sent to some 48 regional divisions and their 3,000 local offices, the ACS trivialized pesticides as a cause of childhood cancer. The ACS also reassured the public that carcinogenic pesticide residues in food are safe, even for babies. When the media and concerned citizens called local ACS chapters, they received reassurances crafted by Porter-Novelli, a powerful PR firm for the agribusiness industry, and then rehashed and sent to another client, the ACS:

“The primary health hazards of pesticides are from direct contact with the chemicals at potentially high doses, for example, farm workers who apply the chemicals and work in the fields after the pesticides have been applied, and people living near aerially sprayed fields. . . . The American Cancer Society believes that the benefits of a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables far outweigh the largely theoretical risks posed by occasional, very low pesticide residue levels in foods.”

In support of this ACS-agribusiness initiative, these reassurances were then rehashed for a third time by the right-wing group, Accuracy in Media (AIM), which published quotes from the ACS memorandum in an article with the banner headline: "Junk Science on PBS," with a opening, "Can we afford the Public Broadcasting Services?"

Based on these and other, longstanding concerns, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the nation's leading charity watchdog, published a statement that "The ACS is more interested in accumulating wealth than saving lives."

1994 The ACS published a study designed to reassure women on the safety of dark permanent hair dyes and trivialize risks of fatal and non-fatal cancers, as documented in over six prior reports. However, the ACS study was based on a group of some 1,100 women with an initial age of 56 who were followed for seven years only. The ACS concluded that "women using permanent hair dyes are not generally at increased risk of fatal cancer." However, risks of cancer in women over 63 are up to 20 times higher for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple myeloma, 34 times for bladder cancer, and 8 times for breast cancer. As designed, the ACS study would have missed the great majority of these cancers, and excluded dark hair dyes as important risks of avoidable cancers.

The ACS abysmal track record on prevention has been and remains the subject of periodic protests by leading independent scientists and public interest groups. A well-publicized example was a New York City, January 23, 1994, press conference, sponsored by the author and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Their press release stated: "A group of 24 scientists charged that the ACS was doing little to protect the public from cancer-causing chemicals in the environment and workplace. The scientists urged ACS to revamp its policies and to emphasize prevention in its lobbying and educational campaigns." The scientists--including--Harvard University Nobel laureates Matthew Meselson and George Wald; former Occupational Safety and Health director Eula Bingham; Samuel Epstein, author of The Politics of Cancer; and Anthony Robbins, past president of the American Public Health Association--criticized the ACS for insisting on unequivocal human evidence that an exposure or chemical is carcinogenic before it would recommend its regulation.

This public criticism by a broad representation of highly credible scientists reflected the well-established conviction that a substantial proportion of cancer deaths are caused by exposure to chemical carcinogens in the air, water, food supply, and workplace, all of which could be prevented by legislative and regulatory action. Calling the ACS guidelines an "unrealistically high-action threshold," a letter from the January 1994 scientists to ACS executive vice president Lane Adams stated that "we would like to express our hope that ACS will take strong public positions and become a more active force to protect the public and the work force from exposure to carcinogens."

However, ACS's policies remain retrogressive and contrary to authoritative and scientific tenets established by international and national scientific committees, and also in conflict with long-established policies of federal regulatory agencies. Speakers at the 1994 press conference also warned that unless the ACS became more supportive of cancer prevention, it would face the risk of an economic boycott. Reacting promptly, the ACS issued a statement claiming that cancer prevention would then become a major priority. However, ACS policies have remained unchanged.

1996 The ACS together with a diverse group of patient and physician organizations filed a "citizen's petition" to pressure the FDA to ease restrictions on access to silicone gel breast implants. What the ACS did not disclose was that the gel in these implants had clearly been shown to induce cancer in several rodent studies, and also that these implants were contaminated with other potent carcinogens such as ethylene oxide and crystalline silica.

1998 In Cancer Facts & Figures-1998, the annual ACS publication designed to provide the public and medical profession with "Basic Facts" on cancer, there is little or no mention of prevention. Examples include: dusting the genital area with talc as a known cause of ovarian cancer; no mention of parental exposure to occupational carcinogens as a major cause of childhood cancer; prolonged use of oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy as major causes of breast cancer. For breast cancer, ACS stated: "Since women may not be able to alter their personal risk factors, the best opportunity for reducing mortality is through early detection." In other words, breast cancer is not preventable in spite of clear evidence that its incidence had escalated over recent decades, and in spite of an overwhelming literature on its avoidable causes. In the section on "Nutrition and Diet," no mention is made of the heavy contamination of animal and dairy fats, and produce with a wide range of carcinogenic pesticide residues, and on the need to switch to safer organic foods.

The ACS allocated $330,000, under 0.1% of its $678 million revenues, to research on Environmental Carcinogenesis, while claiming allocations of $2.6 million, 0.4% of its revenues. Furthermore, in its annual publication, Cancer Facts & Figures, designed to provide the public and medical profession with "basic facts" on cancer, other than information on incidence, mortality and treatment, there was little or no mention of primary prevention. For breast cancer, ACS stated: "Since women may not be able to alter their personal risk factors, the best opportunity for reducing mortality is through early detection."

1999 The ACS denied any risks of cancer from drinking genetically-engineered (rBGH) milk. Its position has remained unchanged in spite of strong scientific evidence relating rBGH milk to major risks of breast, prostate, and colon cancers, as detailed in my 2006 "What's In Your Milk?" book (Trafford Publishing, 2006).

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Notes:

* Based in part on "THE STOP CANCER BEFORE IT STARTS CAMPAIGN: How To Win The Losing War Against Cancer." Cancer Prevention Coalition Report, 2003. This report was sponsored by 8 leading cancer prevention experts, and endorsed by over 100 activists and citizen groups, and is based in part on a prior publication in the International Journal of Health Services (see Appendix A).

Evidence for these risks is also summarized in my May 11, 2007 and January 12, 2010 Citizen Petitions to the Food and Drug Administration. These requested the FDA Commissioner "to label milk and other dairy products produced with the use of Posilac with a cancer risk warning. Both petitions were endorsed by leading national experts, and supported by over 60 scientific references. However, the FDA has still remained recklessly unresponsive.

2000 The January Cancer Letter, commented on the, behind the scenes, ACS creation of a Legislative Committee to gain major control of national cancer policy. Dr. John Durant, former executive President of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists, charged: "It has always seemed to me that was an issue of control by the ACS over the cancer agenda. They are protecting their own fundraising capacity..." from competition by survivor groups.

Also, the Cancer Letter, revealed that ACS public relations had close ties to the tobacco industry. Shandwick International, representing R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, and subsequently by Edelman Public Relations, representing Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, had been major public relations firms for the ACS in its attempts to rewrite the 1971 National Cancer Act, and in conducting voter education programs in the past presidential campaign.

2002 In the ACS Cancer Facts and Figures 2002, the Community Cancer Control Section includes a "Look Good...Feel Better" program to teach women cancer patients beauty techniques to help restore their appearance and self-image during chemotherapy and radiation treatment." This program was partnered by the National Cosmetology Association and The Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association Foundation, which failed to disclose the wide range of carcinogenic ingredients in toiletries and cosmetics. These trade organizations have also failed to disclose evidence of excess risks of breast and other cancers following long-term use of black or dark brown permanent and semi-permanent hair dyes. The ACS also failed to inform women of these avoidable risks.

The Environmental Cancer Risk Section of the ACS Facts and Figures Report also reassured that carcinogenic exposures from dietary pesticides, "toxic wastes in dump sites," ionizing radiation from "closely controlled" nuclear power plants, and non-ionizing radiation, are all "at such low levels that risks are negligible."

2005 The ACS indifference to cancer prevention other than smoking, remained unchanged, despite the escalating incidence of cancer, and its $1 billion budget. Some of the more startling realities in the failure to prevent cancers are illustrated by their soaring increases from 1975 to 2005, based on NCI epidemiological data.

2007 The ACS indifference to cancer prevention, has remained unchanged despite evidence on the escalating incidence of a wide range of cancers for over three decades.

Some of the more startling realities in the failure of the ACS to recognize and warn of the escalating incidence of a wide range of avoidable cancers, as documented in the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reports, is illustrated by their soaring incidence from 1975. These include:

o Post-menopausal breast cancer. This increased by 23 percent, due to a wide range of known causes. These include birth control pills; estrogen replacement therapy; toxic hormonal ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products; diagnostic radiation; and routine premenopausal mammography, with a cumulative breast dose exposure of up to about five rads over ten years.

o Testes cancer. This increased by 60 percent, due to pesticides; hormonal ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products; and estrogen residues in meat;

o Malignant melanoma in adults. This increased by 163 percent, due to the use of sunscreens in childhood that fail to block long wave ultraviolet light;

2009 The ACS 2009 budget was about $1 billion, of which 17% was allotted to prevention, predominantly smoking cessation, and 28% to support services and salaries. The top three executive salaries listed ranged from $670,000 to $1.2 million.

In a 2009 publication by Dr. Elizabeth Fontham "American Cancer Society Perspectives on Environmental Factors and Cancer," she claimed that: "Cancer prevention is central to the ACS and are primarily focused on modifiable risk factors that have been demonstrated to have the largest impact on cancer risk in the general population, with particular emphasis on tobacco, and well-proven policy and program interventions. The ACS addresses nutrition, physical inactivity and obesity, alcohol consumption, excessive sun exposure, prevention of certain chronic infections, and selected other environmental factors through a variety of venues." Dr. Fontham also reiterated longstanding ACS claims that "the estimated percentage of cancers related to occupational and environmental carcinogens is small compared to the cancer burden from tobacco smoking (30%) and the combination of nutrition, physical activity, and obesity (35%)."

2010 On May 6, 2010, the President's Cancer Panel released an approximately 200 page report, "REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER: What We Can Do Now."

Meticulously documented and with comprehensive scientific references, the Cancer Panel report warned: "Though overall cancer incidence and mortality have continued to decline in recent years, the disease continues to devastate the lives of far too many Americans. In 2009 alone, approximately 1.5 million American men, women, and children were diagnosed with cancer, and 562,000 died from the disease. With the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable burden of cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures that could have been prevented through appropriate national action. The Administration’s commitment to the cancer community and recent focus on critically needed reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act is praiseworthy. However, our Nation still has much work ahead to identify the many existing but unrecognized environmental carcinogens and eliminate those that are known from our workplaces, schools, and homes."

"The [President's] Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread." The Panel concluded that cancer caused by environmental exposure has been "grossly underestimated." The Panel also listed a wide range of cancers, such as breast, kidney, leukemia, liver, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for which well-documented causes are detailed.

Appendix F of the Panel is a masterly and comprehensive summary of known "strong" and "suspected" carcinogens, their "sources/uses," and their "strong" or "suspected" links to specified cancers. This Appendix is an update of a publication by Dr. Richard Clapp, an internationally recognized expert on avoidable causes of cancer, in the prestigious 2008 Reviews of Environmental Health.

The President's Report was promptly endorsed by a wide range of leading scientific and public policy experts. The Report also lent strong support to Senator Frank Lautenberg's Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 intended to ensure the safety of all chemicals used in commerce.

In July 2010, just two months following its rejection of the President's Report, the ACS released a publication by Dr. Elizabeth Ward, ACS vice president of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research, titled "Research Recommendations for Selected High-Priority IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) Carcinogens." This focused on "20 Agents - - prioritized for review in occupational populations." Trying to play both sides, Dr. Ward conceded that "there is more of a hint that in most cases (these carcinogens) might be involved with cancer." Nevertheless, she dismissively claimed that "the studies that could make a definitive link are missing and need more study." She also claimed that while there is significant concern about substances or exposures in the environment that may cause cancer, there are some agents and exposure circumstances where evidence of carcinogenicity is substantial, but not yet conclusive.

Dr. Ward's qualified publication hardly is surprising. Only 2 months previously, the ACS had explicitly dismissed scientific evidence on the carcinogens previously identified in Appendix F of the President's Cancer Panel Report. However, this evidence had been fully documented in 2004 by the Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program (NTP), besides confirmed by other U.S. federal agencies, besides the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

The President's Cancer Panel Report was also promptly criticized by Dr. Michael Thun, ACS vice president emeritus, in his 2010 publication, "The Global Burden of Cancer: Priorities for Prevention." "Unfortunately, the perspective of the report is unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer, and by its dismissal of cancer prevention efforts aimed at the major known causes of cancer (tobacco, obesity, alcohol, infections, hormones, sunlight) as focused narrowly." These exclusionary and self-interested claims had also been expressed by Dr. Elizabeth Fontham, ACS Vice President Epidemiology Research, in her 2009 publication, "American Cancer Society Perspectives on Environmental Factors and Cancer."

The ACS further complained that it would be unfortunate if people came away with the message that the chemicals in the environment are the most important cause of cancer at the expense of those lifestyle factors, like tobacco, physical activity, nutrition, and obesity, that have by far the most potential in reducing cancer deaths.

"Elements of this report are entirely consistent with the recently published "American Cancer Society Perspective on Environmental Factors and Cancer" which, like the current report, identifies several areas of particular concern."

These concerns "include the accumulation of certain chemicals in humans and in the food chain, especially those that mimic naturally occurring hormones or other processes in the body; the potentially greater susceptibility of children and other subgroups; the large number of industrial chemicals that have not been adequately tested for toxicity and carcinogenicity; potential cancer risks from widely used medical imaging procedures that involve ionizing radiation; potential biological effects of chemicals at low doses; and the potential effects of combinations of exposures."

"In fact, the precise proportion of cancers related to environmental exposure has been debated for nearly 30 years. And while there is no doubt exposure to chemicals has some bearing on cancer risk, the level of risk is certainly far below other identified cancer risks, like tobacco, nutrition, physical activity, and obesity."

"There is no doubt that environmental pollution is critically important to the health of humans and the planet. However, it would be unfortunate if the effects of this report were to trivialize the importance of other modifiable risk factors that offer the greatest opportunity in preventing cancer."

"The [President's Cancer Panel] report is most provocative when it restates hypotheses as if they were established fact. For example, its conclusion that the true burden of environmentally (i.e. pollution) induced cancer has been grossly underestimated does not represent scientific consensus. Rather, it reflects one side of a scientific debate that has continued for almost 30 years."

Of inescapable and incriminatory concern, the ACS admission on the predominant role on these avoidable causes of cancer is decades overdue. The ACS cannot escape unarguable, if not criminal, responsibility for the countless avoidable non-smoking related cancers and deaths.

From its inception in 1922 until now, the public has been and continues to be misled by the ACS, and most recently by Drs. Thun and Ward, with their exclusionary emphasis on personal responsibility and faulty lifestyle as the predominant cause of cancer. However, this reckless misrepresentation contrasts bizarrely with their two scientific publications in 2009, and one in June this year, incriminating a wide range of avoidable environmental causes of cancer, and priorities for its prevention. However, the public still remains uninformed of these belated and damaging admissions, responsible for countless cancers and deaths over the last nine decades.

Criticism By The Society Of Toxicology

The August 6, 2010 CANCER LETTER published a letter from the Society of Toxicology, which traditionally has faithfully endorsed ACS policies, criticizing the May 6 President's Cancer Panel Report.

"The Society of Toxicology applauds this effort to raise awareness of environmental causes of cancer, and supports the need to understand the role that environmental factors play in this disease.

"The Panel's report has been received with mixed reviews from some medical and scientific experts as well as several organizations and advocacy groups. For example, while experts generally believe that the increasing number of known or suspected environmental carcinogens warrants further study and action to reduce or eliminate these exposures, some are concerned that the report overstates the risk of environmentally-induced cancer and gives too little attention to the major known causes of cancer, including tobacco, obesity, sunlight, and alcohol.

"A second criticism is that the report recommends a precautionary approach. The SOT is firmly committed to disease prevention as noted by one of the Society's strategic objectives, "Increase the impact of toxicology on human health and disease prevention." However, THE SOT claims that at the heart of toxicological research is the premise that "the dose makes the poison." So we believe that current regulatory decisions should be based on well-informed safety assessments that emphasize appropriate dose-response data." In this connection, the SOT is on record as fighting against the 1958 Delaney Amendment to the 1938 Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act. This requires an automatic ban on food additives causing cancer in experimental animals or men. In a similar class, the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists has generated so called safe exposure levels or "threshold limit values," exposure levels for carcinogens.

ACS "CANCER FACTS & FIGURES" 2010 ANNUAL REPORT

Can Cancer Be Prevented?

"All cancers caused by cigarette smoking and heavy use of alcohol could be prevented completely. The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2010, 171,000 cancer deaths are expected to be caused by tobacco use. Scientific evidence suggests that about one-third of the 569,490 cancer deaths expected to occur in 2010 will be related to overweight or obesity, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition and thus could also be prevented. Certain cancers are related to infectious agents, such as hepatitis B virus (HBV), human papilloma virus (HPV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), and others, and could be prevented through behavioral changes, vaccines, or antibiotics. In addition, many of the more than 1 million skin cancers that are expected to be diagnosed in 2010 could be prevented by protection from the sun's rays and avoiding indoor tanning.

"Regular screening examinations by a health care professional can result in the detection and removal of precancerous growths, as well as the diagnosis of cancers at an early stage, when they are most treatable. Cancers that can be prevented by removal of precancerous tissue include cancers of the cervix, colon, and rectum. Cancers that can be diagnosed early through screening include cancers of the breast, colon, rectum, cervix, prostate, oral cavity, and skin. For cancers of breast, colon, rectum, and cervix, early detection has been proven to reduce mortality. A heightened awareness of breast changes or skin changes may also result in detection of these tumors at earlier stages. Cancers that can be prevented or detected earlier by screening account for at least half of all new cancer cases."

Strikingly, this 2010 Report, like its five annual predecessors, avoids any reference to 11 carcinogens identified in the 2004 National Toxicology Program (NTP) Report, besides 9 of the same also identified in the 2010 President's Cancer Panel (PCP) Report. More substantively, this Report raises serious concerns as to whether the ACS remains fixated on its decades old insistence on "blame the victim" responsibility for avoidable causes of cancer.

CARCINOGENS LISTED IN THE 2010 AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY (ACS) REPORT AS "NEEDING MORE STUDY," BUT PREVIOUSLY IDENTIFIED AS CARCINOGENS AND BY THE 2010 PRESIDENT'S CANCER PANEL (PCP) REPORT AND BY THE 2004 NATIONAL TOXICOLOGY PROGRAM (NTP) 11TH REPORT ON CARCINOGENS

2011 On February 18, the ACS stated that it has "no formal position regarding rBGH [in milk]" and that "the evidence for potential harm to humans is inconclusive." The ACS also claimed that "while there may be a link between IGF-1 levels in milk and cancer, the exact nature of this link remains unclear." This claim is contrary to the unequivocal evidence of increased risks of breast, colon, and prostate cancers (p.33).

Since 1996, the ACS has collaborated with cancer organizations in about 90 countries outside the United States to license and support its "Relay For Life" programs (http://www.relayforlife.org/relay). The International Relay "enables cancer leagues around the globe to increase their visibility and income, -- while building survivorship, volunteerism, and advocacy efforts in their communities."

As the ACS states, its "International Relay For Life is a training and technical assistance program for cancer organizations worldwide." Team members take turns to walk or run around a track for 12-24 hours. "Through the Relay, these organizations bring together passionate volunteers, promote their mission-based activities, and mobilize communities to take action in the international movement to end cancer," by stopping smoking and developing health lifestyles. "No matter where they take place in the world, Relay events are intended to give people a chance to celebrate the lives of cancer survivors, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against a disease that has taken too much."

In each of over 90 Relay nations, "the funds support local organizations' cancer control programs, services, and research. These organizations also contribute part of their funds to the Global Cancer Fund, which supports ACS "cancer control programs in developing countries that would not otherwise be possible."

In the 2010 Relay For Life, 90 nations worldwide celebrated 14 years of "helping save lives from cancer." However, the future of the Relays now depends on whether the ACS belatedly becomes more interested in saving lives than accumulating wealth.

Quentin Young, M.D., Chairman, Health and Medicine PolicyResearch Group, National Coordinator of the Physicians for a National Health Program Past President of the American Public Health Association, and CPC Board of Directorsquentin@pnhp.org

Thomas J. Barnard, M.D., CCFP, FAAFPAdjunct Professor of Family Medicine, University of Western Ontario, CanadaAdjunct Professor of Human Biology and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canadabarnard@mnsi.net

Maude BarlowNational Chairperson, The Council of Canadians, Ottawa, Ontario, CanadaDirector, International Forum on Globalizationmbarlow8965@rogers.com

Vicente Navarro, M.D.Professor of Health and Public Policy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MDProfessor of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SpainEditor-in-Chief, International Journal of Health Servicesvnavarro@jhsph.edu